Huskies notebook: Holiday suffers mild concussion

– Justin Holiday suffered a minor concussion against Cal on Saturday. The injury kept him out of practice on Monday and he was scheduled for light practice on Tuesday. Washington coach Lorenzo Romar expects Holiday to be in the starting lineup when the Huskies face UCLA on Thursday.

– Darnell Gant has moved from starter to the ninth man in the rotation. Gant, the definition of team-oriented, has accepted the role well according to Romar.

“His body language and his effort have suggested that he’s done fine in that role,” Romar said. “I know Darnell, like anyone else, would prefer to be a starter and prefer to play more minutes. I think in the last couple game he’s served more as a relief pitcher role. Not quite sure when he was going to get in or not but he’s ready to go. I think he’s come in the last couple of games and done a nice job for us.”

Washington is lucky to have a player with Gant’s disposition to move that far down the pecking order. After being a starter almost the entire year for the conference champions, Gant would have a legitimate gripe about being moved down. But that’s not how he does things.

– Quincy Pondexter scored 52 points over the weekend on his way to Pac-10 player of the week honors. Romar said Pondexter’s big week was a combination of things.

“Our defense helped because he got some stuff in transition,” Romar said. “I think Quincy helped in that he was fairly aggressive. I think we were able to help in that we were able to define even better and emphasize more offensively what our spacing needed to look like and I think we needed more ball reversals.

“Quincy and Isaiah (Thomas) are scorers. Having played and coached with scorers, after a while they don’t get touches in the right spot, they start twitching so to speak. They’ll do whatever it takes to get that touch. Sometimes you can end up forcing shots. What we tried to help with our team is No.1, you don’t need to do that and No. 2, we get ball reversals, the ball will find the scorers.”

Washington also moved Pondexter to the elbows a lot, particularly the left elbow and kept Thomas on the right side. Thomas’ defender was forced to honor him which gave Pondexter chances and the space to drive the ball to his preferred right hand.

The senior also showed more patience when a double-team flashed at him. Cal often brought a second defender, but rarely did that defender stay. That allowed Pondexter to use a simple ball fake to take his time then beat on whoever tried to stop him one-on-one once the help defender left.

– Romar has also changed the distribution of minutes within the rotation. The starters are on the floor for longer stretches of time together. In a tight game, the rotation will likely be reduced to nine. He also tried to explain Holiday’s influence on the floor.

“A lot of guys still played but weren’t in as early,” Romar said. “I think it had more to do with our mindset. We had the right mindset this weekend where we didn’t have the right mindset when we came back from the Christmas break. It just so happens Justin is a guy who has and always had that mindset.

“If you were baking something and it needed cinnamon … this thing is blah, tastes likes a handkerchief … you put cinnamon in there, that’s the thing it needed most was cinnamon! That’s what he was like. We needed energy, we needed hustle, and we needed defense.”

That would be the metaphor of the day.

– Pondexter’s ability to deal with bigger players in the post has allowed Romar to go to a smaller lineup. As versatile as Holiday is, Pondexter’s interior fight makes him able to guard power forwards. He wants to play down there anyway. If not for that, this new equation would not work.